He keeps tabs on Bainbridge tax levies

Quote:"We need to protect ourselves from the potential of fiscal over-exuberance."

By Jack Swanson

For the Sun

Many people take twisty roads to get from there to here, but Bob Fortner's path has been twistier than most.

He could be called Dr. Bob, but he gave up doctoring some time back. Now, he has taken on the role of Bainbridge Island's Chicken Little, warning the citizenry not that the sky is falling but that if the island's four taxing districts don't do more joint planning, nobody will be able to afford to live there anymore.

He has been so successful at it that some public officials turn pale when Fortner and his wife Nancy walk into a board meeting.

Right now, the city, park department, fire department and school district are discussing possible tax levies totaling around $70 million, "and if you add in another elementary school in 10 years or so, tack on another $20 million," Fortner says.

Born 65 years ago in Leavenworth, Fortner earned a bachelor's degree in zoology and a medical degree from the University of Washington. He specialized in nephrology — the diagnosis and treatment of kidney disorders — and spent nearly 20 years directing a kidney program at a hospital in Mountain View, Calif.

The Fortners moved to Bainbridge Island in 1989 to "reflect and redirect," he says. The practice of medicine was changing, and "we decided we weren't going to be a part of that."

"We came here with the idea of wiping the slate clean and seeing what popped up," he says. "Then we just got this wild hair to open a bookstore. Some friends gave us the lowdown on the problems of running a bookstore, and we didn't listen to them and did it anyway.

"God bless Bainbridge and its book lovers because they just treated us very well, and we've been at it now for 12 or 13 years, and we love it."

By the mid-1990s, the Internet revolutionized the book-selling industry. The Fortners fought back by joining the revolution and closed their bookstore, moving its inventory to their newly built home north of Winslow.

Most of the 10 acres surrounding their home has been deeded to the Bainbridge Island Land Trust. They have developed a small farming operation on land outside of the trust, growing berries, herbs and vegetables.

"We took up cycling a year ago," Fortner says. "We did a 500-mile ride last summer over Teton Pass."

But it was a failed Bainbridge Island Park District levy three years ago that propelled the Fortners into activist mode.

"As a city, Bainbridge Island is unique in all of Washington because we have four separate taxing districts. No other city is like us," he said.

And there's no statutory requirement for these agencies to communicate, collaborate or cooperate with one another.

"When the levy came back to the ballot in September for a larger amount than that which had failed, both Nancy and I said, 'What's behind that?'" Fortner said. "She was actually the first person to step into this. She went out and interviewed the park director, and she got me interested in how the finances of that district work."

The district handed over piles of financial documents. Fortner cranked them into his computer.

"And that was really the catalyst that caused us to issue our invitation to others to join the Bainbridge Resource Group to ask questions and try to add content to the process."

Soon, Fortner's massive spreadsheets were integrating proposed bond and levy information for all four districts. The couple's influence helped spawn a recently released document that allows islanders to see the cumulative impact for themselves.

The bottom line showed the combined impact on what taxes citizens will pay a decade from now. Total projects on the drawing boards total nearly $100 million in the next decade. The individual districts don't talk about how their own plans affect the total bill.

That's the whole point, Fortner asserts. Tax-paying citizens and those who sit on the boards need to know what the island's collective bottom line is, he says.

Despite the uncertainties of the island's four-government system, Fortner said he doesn't favor consolidating them into, say, just two — the city and the school district.

"We have the advantage of being able to do things independently," he said. "But we need to protect ourselves from the potential of fiscal over-exuberance."

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